He's a small man, dressed in jeans and confident in his age to not care that his hair is entirely gray now. He comes out on the small stage in front of the dinner and show crowd at the Birchmere and says, "I'm David Byrne," in such a way that encompasses all that is awkward and quirky about this man with one of the most unique artistic careers in the rock era (only matched, in my mind, by the chameleon-like Bowie or Madonna). He goes on to introduce the opening act, a young woman from Argentina named Juana Molina, saying that he isn't sure of what the crowd thinks of when they think of Argentina, but he thinks that Juana Molina and her music likely won't be it. He's had her music on his mp3 player (I note he didn't say iPod, although he owns one) and wanted to have her share with us.

Molina was joined on stage by a huge bearded, bald man and the two of them spun dials and flicked switches on the bank of sythesizers they brought with them, bringing forward an atmospheric background before Molina began a repetitious rhythmic strumming of her guitar and sang, in Spanish, a near chant, the total combination of which reminded me more than anything of Laurie Anderson. This was reinforced by her song that she introduced by saying that it was "a song for people who were troubled...by the neighbor's dog," which featured Molina and her compatriot doing a duet of dog barks. As weird as it seems, like Laurie Anderson, the songs had a undeniable hook to them, both hypnotic and ingratiating. If I could have understood the lyrics, I might have bought an album, but as it was I was put in the situation of Molina and her Argentinian friends who had to get used to music in a language not their own.

After they cleared her equipment from the stage, Byrne returned with his current entourage: two percussionists, a bass player, and a string quartet, the Tosca Strings (expanded to a six-piece for this tour). After a couple of songs from his recent solo albums, they broke into "I Zimbra" and the crowd erupted. It wasn't that they didn't want to hear the solo stuff, which got plenty of applause, but most knew him from Talking Heads and were happy to see that he wasn't going to ignore the first 15 years of his musical output.

The unusual instrumentation of strings, percussion (including marimba in place of a piano or synthesizer), bass and various acoustic and electric guitars modified the songs from their studio versions. In some cases, this modification was perfect, such as a rousing rendition of "U.B. Jesus" and "Road to Nowhere," and sometimes the results were just strange, such as a guitar part from "Life During Wartime" being taken by the first violin. The songs that originally had strings on Look Into the Eyeball sounded fuller in this setting, taking on more feeling in this intimate venue that they missed from their cerebral and antiseptic recordings.

If anything, Byrne showed that even a geeky, older white guy could rock out, unashamed of the herky-jerky dancing that had made him an MTV fixture during the days of Stop Making Sense. While not the full band of the Speaking in Tongues tour, with and without the string section, Byrne's band had a driving beat that was impossible not to love. Of particular note was the live rendition of the X-Press version of the last song on his new album, Grown Backwards, an ironic piece caled "Lazy."

As someone who missed seeing Talking Heads live, I was happy to have this opportunity to capture at least some of that magic.

P.S. I see that David Byrne is keeping a tour blog on his Web site. Very interesting to read, especially now that I've experienced the tour itself. If only it had an RSS feed!